Valérie d. Walker, dyer/designer/educator

Going back to Kansas City, Missouri for my 3^rd SDA Conference there,  I felt a strong surge of familiarity.  Over 15 SDA conferences have been held at this same location, a 30-year history of place and event developing together, and Off The Grid is the last SDA conference here for long time.  Other locations have a high standard to live up to, given how much natural and artistic beauty surrounded the KCAI conference.   The campus is an open-air sculpture garden featuring ancient Ginko trees, inspired eclectic pieces such as Coosje van Bruggen & Claes Oldenburg’s Shuttlecocks, enormous Badmitton birdies tumble about the Nelson-Atkins museum, to land along-side Henry Moore’s recumbent curves, in the shadow of Magdelena Abakanowicz’s  “30 Standing Figures”.  While on the city-side of campus,  Louise Bourgeois’ Weaver-Spider dances around a Crying Giant  by Tom Otterness, in the shadow of a Giant Man’s Hankerchief by Coosje&Claes, on the lawn of the Kemper Museum.

 An major reason many go to SDA conference is the workshop experience.  Doing the entire conference would be 5 days pre-conf workshops + 4 days of conference + 5 days for post-workshops = 2 whole weeks in full fibre bliss!  An army of workshop volunteers, especially the in-class assistants, all unpaid, support the instructors & students in the workshops and provide a great deal of personal help and support to the many newcomers still trying to find their way around.  These wonderful volunteers are highly appreciated and need to be applauded and thanked by all!   Merçi beaucoups!!

 Wanting to deepen and expand my experience with Katagami (cut paper stencils), and Rice Paste as a dye & resist, Nassen, I enjoyed a 4-day pre-conference workshop with a true Masteress,  the inspirational, humble, marvel Akemi Nakano Cohn.    Cutting stencils & making rice paste, provided a rigorous mental, technical and physical work-out.  Demanding a great deal from a group that quickly became friends who’ve just met,  we happily worked in studio all night long.    Before our nights in studio, all the workshop participants and interested locals atttended the Workshop-Leader’s Artist talks. Featuring a different 3 or 4 of the workshop leaders each of the pre- & post-conference nights, these talks are a great way to find out more about the practices and methods of a diverse group of artists while meeting other workshop folks.  Challenging in their scope and breadth of experiences, each night we discovered new ways to consider art, culture, focus, materials & techniques.  These talks inspired a great deal of animated conversation far into the night on the brick-mansion terrasse overlooking those massive ginko trees, a marvelously simple & lovely Andy Goldsworthy Stone-Spiral, plus a blinking sidewalk of coloured lights.  Pre-conference days melted very quickly into a final wrap-up and all the workshops had open studio visitations.   Lots of great felting and colours!

 

 to be continued .....